My husband’s infidelity has tainted everything about my marriage, including my memories

Sometimes I hear from wives who feel that everything about their marriage is now tainted because of their husband’s infidelity. In fact, some even begin to question her husband’s love and feelings for them. Eventually, she may begin to feel that her shared history might be distorted or as if all the happy memories are in her mind.

I heard of a wife who said, “My husband’s infidelity has absolutely ruined everything. I don’t trust him. I can’t even bear to look at him. But do you know what the worst part is? Not only did he destroy our present and our future, but I feel as if he too had destroyed our past. These days, when I look back on the early years of our marriage or when we were dating, I feel cheated out of what should have been. “I don’t even look back at happy memories without having a feeling horrible in the pit of the stomach. He used to look back on our early relationship with longing and nostalgia. Now, I wonder if he was looking at other women even back then or if he was lying to me in the past but I just didn’t want to see it. I am so angry about this. Because if my husband and I had gotten divorced for any other reason or if he was going to leave my life any other way, at least he could look back and think we had some happy memories. Now, I feel like we don’t even have that anymore. Do you ever get better?”

I think it will improve. In fact, it is my own experience that improves a lot. And I know how this feels. I felt the same way. I would even look back on my honeymoon and wonder what I might have missed. I thought back to our early marriage when we were struggling but blissfully happy and wondered if I was the only one who felt this happiness or if I only saw what I wanted to see.

However, as time has passed and I have healed, I can now fondly look back on my memories. Yes, my husband and I reconciled and this may have something to do with my best memories. But, I hear of wives who eventually ended the marriage but eventually come to see their memories as positive feelings instead of negative ones. How is this possible? Are we all crazy or do we have an enormous capacity to forgive or forget? I don’t think that is the case either. I will explain below.

When the pain is fresher, your memories will be more distorted: Please believe me when I say that I do not mean to be condescending or pushy. With my record, this is the last thing I want. But I know from experience that your memories will be the most negatively affected when your pain is most intense and freshest. In the first few days after the adventure, you’re just not thinking clearly (and understandably so). Your emotions are all over the place and you tend to see things at their worst. This is absolutely normal. But it’s also about the worst it can and does get. From there, little by little things improve because they have the time and distance necessary to do so.

We tend to remember things as more romantic when we’re happy and remember them as more dire when we’re not: Do you know I told you that I used to fondly remember the early years of my marriage when we were poor but happily in love? Well, if I’m honest, at the time when we were in financial trouble, I didn’t think that borrowing money from my parents was that great or that romantic. But, as time went on, I tended to blur the lines on how I really felt. And when I no longer felt the frustration of not having enough money, I actually looked back longingly because other good things were happening in my life, like getting married and starting a family.

The thing is that we tend to forget how bad things were (and also how good they were) over time. The lines become blurred and the feelings dull. And, when you’re in pain, this can be a good thing. Now that it’s been a few years since the infidelity, I can go back to that time and not feel like I’m going to throw up. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t remember it as a moment I enjoyed or even tolerated. But, the truth is that all marriages have their fair share of burdens. I also don’t remember having to borrow that money from my parents as such a horrible thing. Similarly, I remember the time when my son was sick and of course I cringe because it was a bad time for us. But now that I know we’re over it, it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. The same goes for infidelity. Once you get over it (and you get over it whether or not your marriage survives because you eventually move on either way), then it no longer has the same control over you or your memories.

Eventually, her authentic memories come back into focus as the healing takes place: As I mentioned, once you start to heal, this distortion no longer has as much control over you. I can’t and won’t tell you that I remember infidelity as a benign period in my marriage. It was horrible. I wouldn’t want to repeat it. But today, I can look back and no longer feel the full weight of emotions. And today, when I look back on our early years, my memories are genuine. The good times are still the good times. And the bad times are put into perspective, even the matter.